Rome.

I'm collecting my new glasses on Friday... does that count as good news?

someone is listening to Make It Wit Chu by Queens of the Stone Age

and they will

/happy Christmas

yes it bloody is! Hope they are spiffing glasses, and they serve you well for may years to come

Foureyes! Ne'mind your new specs, my mother-in-law just got a £2500 rebate from the taxman. That'll buy a turkey so large you'd think it's mother had been rogered by an omnibus

The opening track from Collapse Into Now.nice to discover they have not recovered their Mojo

..of guitar teaching for the year, I now have six weeks of glorious lolling about in the Australian summer.
Oh..and my wife bought me a beautiful 1965 Gibson ES330 for my birthday.
There'll be no rioting round my way.

The Ashes in the next few days, that'll do for me. I shut my front door avoid the news and immerse myself into the world of Atherton, Lloyd, Botham, Hussain, Gower and Warne. Cricket is the ultimate anti fed up serum in my world.

my kids today.
£5 a month to WWF. Happy Orangs, happy kids. :-)

..(sorry, thought I was Karl Pilkington for a minute there)

will this do?

I'm just home from the pub, I've had four pints and spent the evening in the company of a delightful young lady, who reckoned the 'Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs' I loaned her was a bloody good album. We might do this again.

After I thought I totally ballsed up the first on Monday.

I might yet salvage some respectability before I hit 30 at the end of next month following a dreadful year-and-a-half.

It's gonna be all right.

We live longer than ever before, there's greater class mobility than at any stage in history, our government is more transparent and accountable (hence the illusion of an increase in corruption and sleaze), we have free healthcare, we don't have batallions of post-match hooligans tearing up our rail network and every Saturday any more like we did 35 years ago, we're no longer subject to the slow-drip threat of republican terrorism, we're not in thrall to a bunch of intransigent trade union nutcases who go on strike over disagreeable sandwich fillings, we no longer have a police force rotten with corruption, married women are actually allowed to have credit in their own names and have recourse to the law if their husbands rape them, homosexuals aren't forced to live underground, Paki-bashing isn't the national sport, I don't pass a concentation camp on the way to work on the train in the morning, small pox has been eradicated, buses no longer smell like ashtrays, cancer has never been more treatable, air travel has never been so ludidcrously inexpensive, with the exception of the USA and Hong Kong our businesses are probably less regulated than anywhere else in the world, we're currently making the Aussies look as good at cricket as the Scots are at football, the cultural paraphenalia we celebrate on sites like this have never been so cheap, so readily available, so plentiful and so diverse, WE HAVE SITES LIKE THIS, museums are free, tartrazine has been excised from our children's diets, and Oasis have split up.

But apart from that, you're right: everything's shit and we're the most poorly-done-to generation in history.

..o peaceful Roman type.

has left Sydney

great reply that Pax. but.. you used to drive past a concentration camp?

The world's going to end in 2012, so not long now.

Can you see how we're working up to it? It's all going to Hell.

I sound like Jeremy Clarkson.

Worst year in business since I started in 1989 & the VAT rise will not help the new year. My youngest son seems intent on messing up his A levels & has no plans for next year. On the other hand we are all fit & well & not in debt. Also at 50 years old I did my first download last night as Rodney Crowell has a new live album that you can't actually buy. It wasn't too painful but what do you do instead of looking at the sleeve while it's playing? Music still has the capacity to make me very happy.

I didn't know I had in the back pocket of an old pair of jeans.I'm landed.

Good news? I've just been given the OK to return to work after nearly two months off after having a Urethroplasty. Never thought I would miss it!

Ian

worrying about the state of the world given that I could do very little about it. I am being made redundant as of tomorrow but you know what, have a new house which I'm going to start playing with, am going to take some time off to relax, read, listen to music and watch stuff I have had piling up and think about doing something worthwhile for the rest of my working life. I may be feeling rather too optimistic about the future but no other way and I always console myself that I am better off than a lot of folks out there. Also, I can watch the Ashes without getting up in the morning. Ah, the joys of small pleasures.

2010 was a great year.

So never forget that the light at the end of the tunnel isn't always an oncoming train.

to look at Bisto's thread on It's a Wonderful Life

Rioting on the streets of London and Greece.
Unemployment rising.
Police stabbed on the street in broad daylight.
Cuts in the public sector.
Vat to rise in January.
Petrol prices going through the roof

And the band played on…

just been to the British Supermarket here In Barcelona for the first time.
Came away with
an Xmas Pud (Reason for going)
and
a Turkish delight
Jumbo sausage roll
A Wright's Steak pie
Rollos 2 packets
Birds instant custard
one pack jam tarts.
Haven't eaten any of the above for about 15 years.
The Turkish Delight never made it back to the Bike as it was eaten 4 seconds after i'd left the shop.
This may not seem like good news to some but for yours truly it has been a magical day.
You'd die if you saw the prices though.

at The 100 Club last night. Yep, I saw Steve Lamacq at the Damaged Goods Records night and thought to myself I can't be all that much of a boring old fogey if, at my age, I'm still attending gigs that Steve Lamacq goes to!

Like all normal people my garage contains everything but the car. So whilst on a tidy up on Sunday to find a bloody paintbrush I found:

- 2 bottles of sloe gin which we made 2 years ago. It's gorgeous
- a bottle of grappa
- half a bottle of chilli vodka
- my son's lost wallet with £60 in it
- my new sunglasses whcih went missing the day after I bought them

I'm not at all sure why they were there in the first place. The GLW has decided it's time I sorted it out properly so who knows what other long lost treasures may be in there.